The State has been or­dered to foot the le­gal costs in­curred by a po­lice con­sta­ble in briefly pur­su­ing a law­suit against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice over al­leged de­lays in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in which he was shot by a prison of­fi­cer while ex­e­cut­ing a search war­rant at his home in 2015. 

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion on the is­sue ear­li­er this week, High Court Judge Joan Charles ruled that PC Vishal Singh was en­ti­tled to the le­gal costs al­though he was forced to with­draw the law­suit short­ly af­ter it was filed, last year. 

Jus­tice Charles not­ed that Singh was on­ly in­formed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tor had been ap­point­ed to probe the in­ci­dent af­ter fil­ing the law­suit be­cause he did not re­ceive a re­sponse to his ini­tial le­gal threat. 

“The fact that the ap­point­ment of the in­ves­ti­ga­tor was on­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed dur­ing the cur­ren­cy of these pro­ceed­ings sup­ports the rea­son­able­ness of the claimant’s de­ci­sion to bring these pro­ceed­ings,” Jus­tice Charles said. 

On Au­gust 10, 2015, Singh, who was as­signed to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, re­ceived a tip that a man in the dis­trict had an il­le­gal firearm and am­mu­ni­tion. Singh and three of his col­leagues at­tempt­ed to ex­e­cute a search war­rant at the man’s home but there was an ex­change of gun­fire.

Singh was shot in his chest and back, while the man, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as prison of­fi­cer Ru­el Ac­coo, was al­so wound­ed. 

Ac­coo’s in­juries were less se­vere and he was treat­ed and dis­charged. Singh, who was left with a bul­let lodged in his back, had to un­der­go ex­ten­sive treat­ment but has since re­turned to ac­tive du­ty. 

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Singh made sev­er­al re­quests un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) to the Pris­ons and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers for in­for­ma­tion on the shoot­ing and Ac­coo’s sta­tus as a hold­er of a firearm.

Both of­fice hold­ers claimed that the in­for­ma­tion was ex­empt but Singh even­tu­al­ly ob­tained much of the sought dis­clo­sure af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly pur­su­ing law­suits over the is­sue.

Singh then sued Ac­coo per­son­al­ly for as­sault and bat­tery. Ac­coo filed a sim­i­lar law­suit against Singh, his col­leagues, and by ex­ten­sion the State. Both cas­es are still pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Singh al­so has a pend­ing law­suit against the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons over the T&T Prison Ser­vice’s al­leged pol­i­cy to al­low off-du­ty of­fi­cers to use their ser­vice weapons for per­son­al pro­tec­tion.

In that case, Singh’s le­gal team is con­tend­ing that the pol­i­cy, which seeks to al­low of­fi­cers who are deemed to be “con­struc­tive­ly” on du­ty per­mis­sion to car­ry their ser­vice weapons, is il­le­gal.

They claim that un­der the Firearms Act, on­ly of­fi­cers that are on ac­tive du­ty are per­mit­ted and that a firearm users’ li­cense is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is re­quired for such use by off-du­ty of­fi­cers.

Singh was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Dou­glas Bay­ley, Ganesh Sa­roop, and Alvin Pariags­ingh. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was rep­re­sent­ed by Vanes­sa Gopaul and Chan­tal Fournil­li­er.